Two Croatian doctors, Gordana Drpa from the KBC Zagreb hospital, and Matej Sapina from KBC Osijek, are the winners of the 2021 International Medis Awards - a sort of medical Oscar for best research achievements in medicine and pharmacy.

The International Medis Awards for Medical Research rewards excellent researchers from nine countries in Central and Southeast Europe in nine medical fields and this year’s winners were proclaimed in Ljubljana on Thursday.

Pulmonologist Gordana Drpa from Zagreb and paediatrician Matej Sapina from Osijek were awarded among 230 researchers who applied for this year’s competition from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia.

Dr Drpa won in the area of pulmonology and allergology. She is the author of the first original article on how the ratio of neutrophils and lymphocytes can predict the outcome of extensive stages of lung cancer in small cells. The article was published in the Radiology and Oncology science journal.

Dr Sapina is the first author of an original scientific article dealing with research in geospatial grouping of children’s IgA-vasculitis and nefritis syndrome. The article was published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

In addition to the two Croatian doctors, other laureates were Marin Jukic from Serbia (pharmacy), Christoph Grander from Austria (gastroenterology), Luka Roskar from Slovenia (gynaecology), Marija Vukoja from Serbia (intensive medicine and anaesthesiology), Aleksandra Tomic-Pesic from Serbia (neurology), Fanka Gilevska from North Macedonia (ophthalmology) and Gorica Ristic from Serbia (rheumatology).

The competition was founded in 2014 by the Slovenian Medis pharmaceutical company and it is the main sponsor of the competition.